Comparative Study On Taoist Priests In The Journey To The West And Jeon Woo Chi,a Novel Of Joseon Dynasty

The Journey to the West was finished in the middle and later periods of Jiaqing,Qianlong and Wanli,and Jeon Woo Chi was finished in the middle periods of Xuanzu Guanghai and Renzu of Joseon Dynasty.Heo Gyun,the author of Jeon Woo Chi,had read The Journey to the West and created a postscript for it,therefore,Jeon Woo Chi has a deep source with The Journey to the West,which embodies especially obvious in images of Taoist priests.The Journey to the West was widely spread in Joseon Dynasty,and had a profound influence on its literature.On the aspect of ideological contents,what The Journey to 'the West shows up is thicker Taoism implication,brighter religion concept of combination of three religions,and stronger thoughts of"relieving the world and pacifying the people".The JoURNEY to The West uses surreal means of artistic expression,which had a far-reaching influence on the literature of Joseon Dynasty.Besides Jeon Woo Chi wrote by Heo Gyun,the ideological contents and means of artistic expression of many other works such as Hong Jitong Biography,Jiuyun Dream and Yulou Dream are similar to The Journey to the West.Images of Taoist priests in The Journey to the West and Jeon Woo Chi are mainly divided into three large categories of Taoist priests in the immortal's world,Taoist priests in the demon's world and Taoist priests in the man's world.Taoist priests were those who have become the immortal,some of them were the immortal when they were born and some practiced to be the immortal in the future and some were mysterious immortals people didn,t know their origins.Taoist priests in the demon's world are demons with the disguise of demons,some of them were ready to help others,while some of them usurped the throne,and some were good at operating.Taoist priests in the man's world were those human Taoist priests who hadn,t practiced to be immortals,divided into diree types of good at divination,leeched on to demons and focused on alchemy.Among which,there were influence of The Journey to the West on Jeon Woo Chi,and national characters and religious features of Jeon Woo Chi.The images of Taoist priests in Jean Woo Chi had an obvious using trail of The Journey to the West for reference,pursuing for immortality,good at magic arts of the immortal's world,focusing on worldly power and abusing and oppressing the people's lives.In general,the images of Taoist priests in The Journeytothe West is partial to the negative,the Taoist priests represented by the Jade Emperor and Supreme Lord had such features of degenerating to the ordinary from the saint,insidious,vicious,cold,indifferent,and egoistical,but those in Jeon Woo Chi were partial to the positive,Jeon Woo Chi and other Taoist priests demonstrated the features of "surpassing the ordinary to the saint,pure,valuing feelings and code of brotherhood and ready to do charity.This was related to the communicating conditions of Taoist in the two countries and the social situation of the both countries.This article does comparative study on images of Taoist priests in The Journey to the West and Jeon Woo Chiy discusses influencing and being influenced,inheritance and development relationship between them,looks forwards to making a modest contribution to discussion of relationship between Chinese literature and culture and other covmtries in the East Asia Chinese culture circle,and provides reference for the literature circle to further deeply research on internal relationship between ancient literature and culture in China.